Mrs. Goodfellow

Recovering the Life and Influence of the "Mother of American Cooking," the Woman Who Changed the Way We Learn How to Prepare MealsIn Philadelphia during the first decades of the nineteenth century, a widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Goodfellow, ran a popular bakery and sweet shop. In addition to catering to Philadelphia's wealthy families and a reputation of having the finest desserts and sweet dishes in the young country, her business stood out from every other establishment in another way: she ran a small school to learn the art of cooking, the first of its kind in America. Despite her fame—references to her cooking as a benchmark abound in the literature of the period—we know very little about who she was. Since she did not keep a journal and never published any of her recipes, we have to rely on her students, most notably Eliza Leslie, who fortunately recorded many of Goodfellow's creations and techniques. Goodfellow is known to have made the first lemon...